First real day on the road

Yesterday, after Peter put the bikes together, we rode around Bordeaux, and we rode and rode and rode!  We got the first puncture - Peter is playing with his bike right now as he thinks he has a slow leak, maybe a spoke or something sticking through into the tube (as he has already replaced one tube).  My helmet was smashed (shows how much they throw the bags around) - so we went and bought me another one.

We got a cool orange one - pale orange - and since then I have barely worn it.  There are these amazing sports stores everywhere, and apparently amazing bike stores, big chains of them, but we haven't been into one yet.

We have this 500 euro note that the darn bank gave us, and we can't cash it in anywhere.  Now that we are at Jason and Isabelles, maybe Isabelle can arrange for it to be cashed at her work.

Peter dealing with first puncture.

One of the many town gates, that used to be part of the town wall, this is the most beautiful one.

Fountain and memorial to fighters in the revolution in Bordeaux.  If you look carefully you can see Peter in front of it with his bike.

The mirror pool, slabs of granite covered in 2 inches of water, that every now and then produce mist. This is people playing in the mist.

So, yesterday, we discovered the amazing bike paths (pistes cycles or pistes velo) that are everywhere.  In a lot of places they are a separate two lane sealed road, along side the main road.  We rode for 30km around Bordeaux, the stupid GPS wanted us to take really long routes to get where we wanted to go, so we are learning to override it with common sense and maps. When we do that, it finally works out where we are going!  But at least it gives us a map.  One of the problems is that it doesn't have any of the bike paths and it keeps trying to get us to go on other roads.

So, last night we packed, and because it is light here until about 10pm we keep losing track of time and at 9pm we realised that we should have some dinner.  What a disaster.  No restaurants near our hotel, so we went back to the hotel and had their awful buffet.  24.5 euros each, we were the last people eating and most of the plates were empty.  But the desserts, fromage (cheese) and wine (17.5 euros) were good!  Lunch was fantastic - baguettes pate, avocado, cheese from the previous day and cherries (it's spring - and as everyone knows, I love my cherries! - and they were so cheap!!!).

This morning, headed off on the real thing.  Beautiful weather, I have a nice layer of either suntan or sunburn, Peter wore long sleeves all day - (we all know how pink he goes!).  Croissants from our favourite bakery (we agreed we probably need something a bit healthier - some fruit or something in the future - but they were good for today), then on to the bike paths.  Getting out of Bordeaux was a little tricky, but it was really well signposted.

Then, we got on to the Bike Path proper - an old railway line.  Beautiful sealed, flat for miles, low gradient, beautiful trees, chateaux and little towns.  But the thing that amazed us were all the late 40's to late 60's men out in their lycra and on their racing bikes.  They were riding fast along this bike path (and it was a Thursday).  We can't work out if they were retired, or just had a day off work.  There must have been about 90 or so in total.  There were also people roller skating, running, walking along the track.

There were amazing little villages all the way along.  Now for all of you that have been to France, no surprise, but for us, very cool and exciting.  And of course - grapes everywhere.  We reckon that all the locals must be purple - there are so many grapes for them to eat.  Okay, we concede, they must be red, as there is so much red wine made from the grapes.  But seriously - Bordeaux produces over 1/4 of the total wine production of France, we think Burgundy is around the same size.

Peters bike at the first stop.

The amazingly well lit apparently 260m tunnel on the track. Nice and cool, as we were starting to get quite warm.

We stopped for a coffee in a little settlement called Lignan-de-Bordeaux, which was more or less just an old train station.  Then for lunch in a lovely hill village with a huge abbey (well the ruins of it) - village was La Sauve, at the top of the hill.  And yes, we rode up the hill.  But it was no match for the hill at the end of the day, riding up to St Emilion - the bikes were too heavy, we were too tired, so we walked the last couple of hundred meters.

At lunch, there were a big group of late 50 something men and women who were picnicking after their walk along a track or somewhere!  We had lunch at La Sauve, and had just come through a fully lit tunnel - which is apparently 290m long. As we got to the entrance, we thought - we are going to have to stop and get our bike lights and headlamps out, but no, all well lit.

The GPS decided to take us in a bizarre direction to St Emilion when we got off the bike path (it was amazing how fast we could go after lunch and stocking up on energy), it would have taken us an extra hour or two if we followed the GPS track, so we took some of the detour as we could see how to connect back up with the main road.  And we came down a steep hill (nice and fast with all the weight on the bike and thank goodness we had to go down and not up that one), and half way down, saw this gorgeous valley and villages along the river.  Absolutely beautiful.

The traffic goes fast along the roads, but unlike in NZ they do swerve and slow down for cyclists.  And there are heaps of cyclists. Lots of those previously mentioned men out training on their road bikes and in lycra.  But also lots of tourists with panniers, lots of couples.  Like the two men (who looked German), on a tandem, all in black.  As Peter said, they must have loved each other a lot (they may just have been friends or brothers) - as sharing a tandem is a huge ask.  We can go bike touring together, but there is no way the tandem will ever work for us.

At Jason and Isabelles now, on the top of the hill at St Emilion.  I was so tired and hot that I downed a Heineken beer (wouldn't normally drink Heineken, but it was great!).  Billie, their 4 year old is here, and Cisco, their 7 year old will be home shortly.

Fantastic that Sam Stosur (Australian) won at Roland  Garros and is through to the finals.  I'm just recharging the GPS batteries, then I will come back and upload the photos and post this.

Notes below on things we saw:
The Abbey at La Sauve 

This Benedictine abbey, founded in 1079, used to be an important stop on the pilgrims route to Santiago de Compostela. Although in ruins nowadays, during the Middle Ages it was very powerful, with 70 priories, some as far as England and Spain.
It's hard to imagine now, but the whole region was heavily forested then and the abbey was a welcome stop for pilgrims. When the popularity of the pilgrimage to Santiago dwindled ever since the 13th century, the importance of the abbey decreased. After the French Revolution the site was used as a stone quarry and the abbey fell into ruins.
Although not restored to its former glory, the site is still an impressive example of Romanesque architecture. It's very atmospheric too, so definitely worth a visit.